Library News Blog

If you have been using RefWorks to manage your research and citations, you may be aware that changes are afoot. As you export a citation from an article database to RefWorks, you have likely seen the option to export to either the “legacy” (original) version or the new version. As the legacy version is guaranteed to remain available only through the end of 2017, we suggest you take the time now to migrate to the new version.

To do a “soft migration,” after you log into the legacy RefWorks, you will see a link at the top of the screen that says, “Move to the newest version of RefWorks from ProQuest.” Choosing that link will move your account data to the new RefWorks. You will be prompted to login to the new RefWorks using your college email. Even if you used your college email to create your original account, do not choose the option that says “Use login from my institution,” if you see it. At this point you are essentially creating a new account. If you currently sign into legacy RefWorks with your institutional email, you are advised to use a different password from the legacy account to avoid confusion. Your new RefWorks account will be created and all your records and folders will be copied from legacy RefWorks.

You may also move your references to the new version from within the new RefWorks. This requires that you have already created an account in the new version of RefWorks. Use “Import References” from the Add menu icon to move your references from the old to the new RefWorks. For this method and for new RefWorks users, simply head to the new RefWorks.

It is possible to have accounts on both platforms, but it is only possible to import new citations to one. We advise that once you migrate your citations from the legacy RefWorks to the new version, you no longer use the legacy RefWorks. While it may take a little bit of getting used to the new environment, the improvements are more than worth the brief adjustment period.

The library now subscribes to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Papers database. According to their website, NBER, “founded in 1920, (is) a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.”

Working papers are written by scholars and experts in a field, prior to submitting those papers to peer-reviewed journals or book editors. They typically contain extensive datasets including time-series data on a wide variety of topics. They also include comprehensive bibliographies.

While the papers found in this database are primarily socio-economic, their scope is in fact much broader. Working papers can be found on topics such as criminal justice, public administration, political science, history, demographics and education.

For example, a simple search on the term immigrants pulled up papers with an expected economic bent such as:

The Earnings of Undocumented Immigrants

Are Immigrants a Shot in the Arm for the Local Economy?

But the search also retrieved papers on the following cultural, historical, sociological, and demographic topics:

The Educational Attainment of Immigrants: Trends and Implications

Immigrants and Gender Roles: Assimilation vs. Culture

Intergenerational Persistence of Health in the U.S.: Do Immigrants Get Healthier as they Assimilate?

Coupled with the current political climate, the College’s mission to educate for justice has been prominently reflected in the kinds of research questions and interests we have been encountering this Fall at the Reference Desk, in our workshops, and course-tailored library sessions. Fittingly, students and faculty have been seeking more information on critical issues that have been garnering the media and public attention.

The Library offers access to an array of current events resources. One that stands out is the Opposing Viewpoints in Contexts database, readily embraced by students who first encounter it in their first-year library workshop. Faculty who touch on current events and debates in their courses and have students research related topics may want to take a closer look at it.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context appeals to students because of its visual and multimedia-rich platform. It is also easily searchable and browsable by topic. Featured resources range from print-based (news items, including editorials, magazine, and journal articles) to multimedia (NPR podcast and news video clips), with statistics and maps if available. As with a vast majority of databases, students can print, email, save, and get help with citation.

The range of topics Opposing Viewpoints covers complements the ease and convenience of its interface. Regularly updated and featuring newly available content, the database addresses such pressing issues as Confederate Remembrance, Freedom of Speech, Gerrymandering and Redistricting, North Korea, US-Puerto Rico Relations, and many others. The range and variety of information offered allow students to get a fairly comprehensive understanding of an issue, thus providing a great foundation for an in-depth engagement with a topic.

When I first arrived at John Jay as Chief Librarian in 1995, Bonnie Nelson immediately made me comfortable and aware of just about everything that went on in the College. It was evident that she was a consummate librarian who strongly supported all librarians, staff, and especially our student body. Whenever I needed statistical information about the Library and its thousands of users, Bonnie was the go-to person. Not only did she advocate for the Library on the many committees on which she served, but she never varied in her support for all staff in the College as she worked tirelessly and well as a representative of the PSC. Bonnie always came through!!

Larry Sullivan

Bonnie is a person who is able to keep a clear perspective when dealing with complicated issues. She knows how to explain things without oversimplifying them. She has a great knowledge of CUNY and College policies, and I will miss this comfort of having someone to consult with immediately by dialing x8267 (one of a few extensions I remember by heart).

Maria Kiriakova

I always admired Bonnie’s ability to look at every angle of a situation and see problems through to a reasonable resolution. I never worked with anyone who gave such a damn about her work, solely for the common good. In the Bonnie-shaped hole that is left here at the Library and the College, all we can do when faced with tough questions is to ask ourselves, “What would Bonnie do?”

Kathleen Collins

I am so very grateful for Bonnie’s mentorship over the past five years. She has shown me—us—again and again how to lead graciously, examine technological issues critically, counsel patiently, and advocate bravely. I’ve learned so much from Bonnie and already miss starting the week with our IT meeting. You can always trust Bonnie’s advice, especially those three little words... “Read the contract!”

Robin Davis

When I first interviewed at John Jay College, one of my library school professors asked whether Bonnie Nelson still worked there because she has never seen anything that Bonnie was involved in that was not well done. It turns out she was right. Bonnie raises the bar in everything she does. She is one of the most capable people I have ever worked with. Her technological savvy, understanding of how libraries can continue to serve the changing needs of its users and her willingness to share her knowledge and know-how with those of us with less experience, will long leave its mark on the library community.

Maureen Richards

Working with Bonnie for all these years has been a tremendous joy. While I’m sad that I’ll no longer see her at the library, I’m glad that she’s able to move on towards new directions and fun experiences. Bonnie, best wishes!

Mark Zubarev

Words cannot describe what Bonnie has accomplished for the Library throughout her career. She has made countless contributions to the Library and she deserves every minute of her retirement life. And personally, she has been nothing but a great mentor to me during my time at the Library. Congratulations and we will all miss you very much!

Geng Lin

Bonnie fought fiercely for faculty with a finely tuned sense of what was going on at John Jay, CUNY and the PSC. She was a true champion for keeping the library and the college on the cutting edge of technologies that benefit all of us—students, faculty and administrators. I will miss her greatly, and so will the college.

Pat O’Hara, Dept. of Public Management

Bonnie mentored me in a lot of things throughout the years. She really cared about students, faculty and staff and it is because of her caring, she helped make John Jay a better place to learn and grow for all. I am very happy for her and I will truly miss her. All the best in your new life Bonnie!

Johnny Taveras, Marketing

Bonnie played a large part in bringing the Lloyd Sealy Library into the 21st Century. Her vision allowed John Jay to be on the cutting edge of library technology, from pulling the wires for the first library network to establishing our web presence to implementing the library’s first online catalog. Her advocacy with the faculty and college administration secured the funding to allow the library to become a leader in CUNY in access to electronic research databases and full-text journal articles. She did a vast amount of service both at the college and across the university including union activities. She was a quiet leader, but her participation in these arenas much sought after. She was a person you could count on to participate. On a personal note, she was a caring mentor, valued collaborator, and friend. She helped me to recognize my potential and sparked my interest in educational technology. Some of the most fun days of my career were spent working with Bonnie in these endeavors! John Jay College will miss her tremendously!!

Kathy Killoran, Office of Undergraduate Studies

To me, Bonnie is a true example of what it means to always do your work with the benefit of the community foremost on your mind. I’ve known Bonnie mainly through the Faculty Senate Technology Committee, which she co-chaired for an incredible 21 years. Thanks to Bonnie’s integrity, her deep knowledge, clear-sightedness, and her calm and even-handed approach to whatever problem might be at hand, everybody’s technology-affected life at the College is better, whether they install software on their office computers, forward their John Jay email to a private account, or take advantage of distance-learning opportunities, to give only three of many possible examples. In addition to all this, I’ve also learned from Bonnie how to run a warm, productive, and enjoyable meeting, one of the little miracles of academic life. It’s hard to imagine the College without her.

This interview was published as Bonnie Nelson, Associate Librarian for Information Systems, retires.

In 1980, John Jay’s president, Gerald Lynch, needed information about the potential for corruption in casino gambling in New York. Chief Librarian Eileen Rowland excitedly told him about a wonderful new way of searching literature, and she tasked her newest librarian, Bonnie Nelson, with helping the president with his research. Lynch visited the library, still wearing running shorts from his morning workout, and sat with Bonnie as she used an acoustic coupler with a dedicated “dumb” (unconnected computer) terminal, dialed a phone number, got a tone and put the handset in the cradle attached to the terminal so the terminal could communicate with the mainframe located in some faraway location. All that before she could even begin a (very slow, 300 bytes/second) search using precise Boolean language and controlled subject headings in Dialog, just to come up with a list of bibliographic references (maybe abstracts if she was lucky) to print out and then locate on the library shelves or on microfilm (if she was luckier).

It sounds cumbersome and archaic now, but Bonnie was at the forefront of library technology. As a Bronx High School of Science student, she had taken take a class in computer programming. That minimal knowledge marked her as a semi-expert, allowing her to get hired as a librarian at NYU where they were implementing a new computerized circulation system. “It was tough times in 1973,” says Bonnie. “Nobody was hiring. They were firing. I was lucky to be hired at all, anywhere.” She played an important role in getting that new system underway and also did reference (of the mediated type described above). She stayed for almost seven years, and was the first librarian to come up for tenure as they had just been granted faculty status. “[NYU] decided everyone needed a PhD,” says Bonnie of the tenure requirements. “And should have written a book or something. I was the test case. I was pretty young and they didn’t want to make a commitment to someone so young.” But more to her credit, she revealed a trait that would serve her well later on: “I didn’t know enough to keep my mouth shut at faculty meetings.” Combined with the overly stringent requirements and an austere economy, the stars were not aligned for Bonnie to remain at NYU, and she was not granted tenure. “It was a rich person’s university,” says Bonnie, admitting that she had not been completely comfortable there. NYU’s loss was CUNY’s gain, where she clearly found her niche and remained for the rest of her library career.

It was fitting, too, as Bonnie started her academic life at City College where she had been a college student and where she had experienced the tumult of the transition to another new era. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, campuses all around the U.S. were frequently closed due to antiwar activity. Bonnie recalls there being two or three years in a row when Spring finals were cancelled. “There were so many protests,” she says. “It was exciting and unnerving.” Adding to the revolutionary air at CCNY during the same time period were equally passionate protests about another issue. Bonnie was a freshman when more than 200 students (mostly black and Puerto Rican) chained the gates to the college in protest about admission standards. “City College was very elitist and white and you needed a 92 average to get in,” says Bonnie. “There we were, in in the middle of Harlem, a black area, with all these elite, white middle class kids.” Eventually, the Chancellor agreed to work towards open admissions which guaranteed every New York City high school graduate a place at City College. “It was the civil rights era,” says Bonnie. “There was a feeling that things needed to change.”

Sympathetic to the causes, Bonnie was easily caught up in the spirit of activism all around her. “It’s what everybody was doing,” she says. A year or two after the open admissions protest, New York State raised the minimum wage, but she was a student aide in the library, making even less than a college assistant, and CUNY was not required to pay student aides minimum wage. She was one of the co-organizers of a one-day strike in protest. A few months later, the aides received their deserved increased pay. Bonnie’s family was not particularly politically active, but in high school, she says, “I was mentored by a fellow student who was much more radical, and she educated me about what was really going on in Vietnam, and so I started tentatively taking steps towards demonstrating against the war. And then in college, I met my husband [Bob Nelson, later Deputy Director of Student Services at the Graduate Center] when I was a freshman, and he was pretty left wing, came from a left wing family, and he continued my education.” Her family eventually came around, too, “as the rest of the country did,” says Bonnie.

A self-described bookworm as a child, Bonnie frequented the public library in her northeastern Bronx neighborhood. “Though I never spoke to a librarian other than to get my library card,” she confesses. She actually had some librarian training before she started at City College. After high school, her mother enjoined her to do volunteer work, so Bonnie headed to Montefiore Medical Center thinking she might be interested in the medical field. On the way to her interview, she passed the patients’ library and spontaneously told the volunteer coordinator she wanted to work in the library, which she did for the summer. As a student at City College, she worked as a staff member in the library for four years. She was an anthropology major but not too keen on the idea of conducting fieldwork in exotic locations for the rest of her life, so she decided to go to library school after college. It was this unusually early start in the field that allowed her such a long library career.

During her time in the library science graduate program at Columbia University, she continued working at the City College library where she mostly did reference work. After library school, while working at NYU, she also obtained a second Master’s degree in Anthropology (starting at Hunter and finishing at NYU). “I didn’t expect to wind up at a criminal justice college,” says Bonnie. “I had no interest in it and knew nothing about it. I thought, well, it’s a job for a few years and we can pay the rent.” Her experience at NYU starting the new computerized circulation system was attractive to Chief Librarian Rowland at John Jay where they were also implementing a new system—using punch cards. “That was old technology even at the time,” says Bonnie, “and they were desperate to have someone who knew something about computers.” Like most faculty who come to John Jay with little background in criminal justice, Bonnie got interested quickly. She vividly recalls helping a forensic science student, who later went on to work for the medical examiner, do research on blood spatters. “And I helped someone in fire science find out the temperature at which blood boils. They needed to know how hot was too hot for firefighters to go in before blood could no longer deliver the oxygen. There were these very gross searches, and I thought, wow, working at John Jay, this is really different!” She also began to stay abreast of crime stories in the news since she knew she would be asked about such subjects at the Reference Desk.

After nearly four decades here, Bonnie is well known for her active role in PSC-CUNY. But despite her early days in activism at City College, she was not a union crusader right away. For her first few years, her time was occupied by trying to publish and get tenure. Junior library faculty at that time got no automatic reassigned time but were eligible to apply for special two week reassignments for research. After being granted tenure, she had her daughter, Miranda. Jim Cohen, Public Management faculty (now emeritus) and chapter chair, asked if she wanted to be more involved in the union, and she said, “Ask me again when my daughter is more independent.” A few years later he did. She served as an alternate delegate and was then tapped to be secretary. “I was very good at taking notes,” she says, and she discovered that distributing notes of Labor-Management and Chapter meetings was actually critical to helping colleagues engage with the union. She also spent years on the PSC Delegate Assembly Library Faculty Committee. “Working with the union and librarians in the union and helping the union to understand librarians are just like other faculty but a little bit different,” she says. She was “in the troops” with other faculty librarians to advocate and win the two additional weeks of annual leave for librarians in the most recent contract, bringing library faculty closer to the parity they have long sought.

One of the things I’m most proud of is the work I did here, and CUNY-wide, in keeping the enemies of academic freedom at bay.

In addition, and even more meaningful for Bonnie, was her work related to technology and academic freedom. She was on the John Jay Faculty Senate Technology Committee, serving as co-chair from 1996 to 2017. In 2005, Bonnie was appointed by the University Faculty Senate to the CUNY IT Steering Committee, a body comprised mostly of vice presidents, or as Bonnie describes, “people who were authorized to make decisions on behalf of their colleges … The UFS needed someone knowledgeable about technology and willing to go to meetings.” In both groups, for about a dozen years, she says, the faculty felt very much under attack with regard to their use of technology. “When the web became a big thing,” says Bonnie, “there were attempts to censor what faculty were seeing and what they could search for. They were keeping logs of every site that faculty went to. Some colleges in CUNY put software on computers in libraries so you couldn’t freely search, but we fought that off at John Jay. [The administration] wouldn’t promise that they wouldn’t use the logs to track what people were doing, and at John Jay, we felt it was a great attack on academic freedom, particularly at a place where faculty were researching terrorist organizations, murder, pedophiles, sex crimes, things like that. There were big fights over whether the college could or should do this [monitoring]. The Faculty Senate Technology Committee was right in the forefront of that.” After 9/11, the FBI began visiting libraries—including John Jay’s—and demanding records of Internet use to identify suspicious activity. “We always fought that [keeping track of use of individual computers] because we wanted the students and faculty to be able to be anonymous,” says Bonnie. “So one of the things I’m most proud of is the work I did here and CUNY-wide, in keeping the enemies of academic freedom at bay.”

She and her colleagues were successful at John Jay in that regard. “We won here and were able to get the support of the important people and came to good resolutions,” she says. “But CUNY was more difficult. I kept very good notes of what was going on at the IT Steering Committee and I tried to alert the chair of the UFS to what was going on. And I used to send my notes to the chair of the UFS where they printed and distributed them. The IT Steering Committee was not a governance body. It was not in the charter anywhere, but it was making these very important decisions. They decided they would have this one faculty representative, and that was me. I could try and speak up for the faculty and occasionally they would listen but more often what happened was the UFS would take alarm, appropriately, and try to pressure the chancellor or various people. Finally they fired me off the UFS. I was a pain.”

In the decades spanning Bonnie’s CUNY career, the most obvious change has been the growth of technology and the Internet. “I used to be the only person I knew who used email,” she says. In 1984, John Jay won a Department of Education grant that included IBM microcomputers, and Bonnie was charged with administering the grant. “In December, we got this big delivery of twenty microcomputers, and they were really expensive and they were put in this room that was going to be the computer lab, but it didn’t have a lock yet and security didn’t have enough staff to protect the machines. So I spent New Year’s Eve sitting in a room with a bunch of microcomputers, guarding them.” That was the first student computer lab at the college. Very few faculty had computers in their offices. “Most faculty didn’t know how to use them, so one of the things the library did was teach faculty how to do word processing, introduction to email, and when the World Wide Web came along we showed them how to search.” She recalls that she and Kathy Killoran (a librarian at John Jay from 1990 to 2006, now Executive Academic Director in Undergraduate Studies) set up what was either the first or second CUNY library connection to the Internet. “We did it ourselves,” she says. “We got the equipment, ran a few wires, plugged it in and there we were. We were very proud of ourselves.”

At John Jay, we have probably the best relations with the college IT department of any CUNY school.

Bonnie considers building the Library’s IT infrastructure—both equipment and personnel—to be her most important contribution to the library. With the support of all three of the chief librarians with whom she worked, she made sure the library controlled its own equipment and content. After the then-head of the Microcomputer Lab tried to edit the library’s web page on the brand new John Jay College website, the Library developed one of the first library websites in CUNY. “We did it by hiring an NYU student who built us a webserver on an IBM desktop and wrote web pages in basic HTML,” Bonnie recalls. That interference by John Jay’s IT department was an aberration, however, and generally relations with DoIT have been constructive and mutually beneficial. “I’ve been lucky that throughout my time at John Jay key people in DoIT have understood that robust library IT infrastructure is critical to the academic success of both faculty and students,” says Bonnie. “We have probably the best relations with the college IT department of any CUNY school—based on years of building trust.” Bonnie said that this allowed her and her staff to build what was needed to provide access to remote library resources from on campus and off—for many years providing better service than was available almost anywhere else in CUNY. Following those early years of reliance on part-time student help and as IT became more complex, Bonnie increasingly turned over the technical aspects of the job to highly-skilled adjuncts and then to specially-educated HEOs (currently Geng Lin) and librarians (like Robin Davis) as she coordinated in her role as Associate Librarian for Information Systems.

One of her most salient memories from her early years at John Jay is a painful one. The Library (and the rest of the college) was located in North Hall, and her office was near the circulation desk. Late on a Friday afternoon in January 1985, Bonnie heard a thud and looked out to see Lloyd Sealy, a formerly high ranking NYPD officer and faculty member at John Jay, lying on his back. “He’d had a massive heart attack,” says Bonnie. She and another woman performed CPR, but he did not survive. It was his 68th birthday. Lloyd had always spent a lot of time in the Library, and students always knew they could find him there. Appropriately, he became the library’s namesake in a 1991 dedication ceremony.

In more recent years, Bonnie became interested in assessment and spent much of her time analyzing library data. “I liked playing with the statistics to see if I could make them tell some kind of story about how we were getting better or how we could do things better, and just looking at trends over time.” Reflecting on how the role of librarians has evolved over the course of her career, recognizing that there is a misperception that librarians are not as essential as they were back in the days of mediated searching, Bonnie says, “Students need a guiding hand. As with so much else in colleges they think they know things they don’t know. They think they know how to weigh what’s true and what’s not. We can see what happens in the country when people don’t know how to tell what’s objective reality and how to figure out what’s real and what’s fake or when they’re being snowed.” She believes that librarians are uniquely suited to try and help people understand where information comes from. “It’s getting worse because of technology,” she says. “It used to be if you saw something on paper you thought it was authoritative, and now if you see it on the computer screen you think it’s authoritative. And it’s so much easier to put anything up on a computer screen. Propaganda used to be expensive. You had to have a printing press. Now just about everybody can do it.”

While Bonnie says that she misses the people at John Jay, “It’s very nice not going to work.” Shortly before she retired, she talked about going camping with her husband, something she expressed some reticence about. They’ve gone twice in the last four months, and she and Bob (who retired in 2016) are planning a cross-country trip to visit national parks. Never one to take the easy path, Bonnie continues to challenge herself. “We survived. Camping is fun in a masochistic way.”

Larry Sullivan co-authored (with Kimberly Collica of Pace University) the peer-reviewed article, “Why Retribution Matters: Progression Not Regression,” in Theory in Action vol. 10, no. 2, April 2017. His section on “Prison Writing” was accepted for publication in The Oxford Bibliography of American Literature. He is Editor-in-Chief of the recently published annual Criminal Justice and Law Enforcement: Global Perspectives (John Jay Press, 2017). He was Series Consultant and wrote the forward to the nine-volume The Prison System (Mason Crest, 2017). He wrote the review for The Morgan Library and Museum’s Sept. 9, 2016 – Jan. 2, 2017 exhibition, “Charlotte Bronte: An Independent Will,” which appeared in newsletter of the Society for the History of Reading, Authorship, and Publishing (SHARP) in Spring 2017.

Kathleen Collins contributed a review of We were feminists once: From Riot Grrrl to CoverGirl, the buying and selling of a political movement by Andi Zeisler to the Journal of Popular Culture (vol. 50, no. 2), 2017, 417–420. She was promoted to full professor effective this Fall.

Jeffrey Kroessler presented “The Preservation Moment: Gentrification Saved New York!” at the Cultural and Historic Preservation Conference at Salve Regina University. His article, “One Staff, Two Branches: the Queens Borough Public Library and New York City’s Fiscal Crisis of the 1970s,” will appear in the Spring 2018 issue of Libraries: Culture, History, and Society.

Robin Davis attended the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in June at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. She published an Internet Connection column, “The Library and the LMS,” in Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian (forthcoming).

Maureen Richards published her article “Stronger Together: Increasing Connections Between Academic and Public Libraries” in Collaborative Librarianship (vol. 9, no. 2). She also presented “Taking it to the next level: Proven strategies for moving from topic to research question to a well-constructed research paper” as part of the Fall and Spring 2017 Saturday Speaker Series, MPA Careers in collaboration with MPA Faculty at John Jay College.

The daily life and travails of a Boston department store detective

Larry Sullivan

Jordan and Marsh began as a department store dealing with “high end” clients in the 1860s in Boston’s downtown shopping and financial district, not far from the Faneuil Marketplace of today. In 1923, Lawrence Schofield, store detective for the store, wrote in his daily diary that “Frances Wilson was in the store and was identified [as] the girl caught on the London account…” Shortly after that entry he wrote, “Got Wilson in coat room. Confessed.” This laconic entry is typical, and we can only wonder how long Frances Wilson took to confess her crime. But what crime exactly did she confess to?

Jordan and Marsh had implemented a credit system by the early 1920s and many of these diary entries were related to the fraudulent misuse of credit accounts. This type of fraud was apparently what Frances Wilson committed. In addition, since Jordan and Marsh marketed a growing number of beauty products, clothes, and other items aimed at women, we are not surprised that the shoplifters are in this demographic. A high number of “girls” were caught for shoplifting, not paying their accounts, or using somebody else’s account number. Latest published research, especially on the large department stores in New York and Chicago, also illustrates the rise in the number of middle-class women shoplifters and the department stores’ problems in dealing with detection of “inventory shrinkage” and the bad publicity of arresting “respectable” middle class women.

Without modern surveillance cameras and the like, store detectives during this period were critical for limiting shoplifting and the misuse of credit accounts. Mr. Schofield’s diary, photographed on the cover, gives a detailed listing of his daily activities, from his leaving for work to his store patrols. Sources for the detection of the growing increase in department store theft rarely include a store detective’s private diary. This important, unique item sheds light on private law enforcement techniques from the early twentieth century. We were very pleased that the Sealy Library acquired this manuscript diary over the summer. It is another example of the comprehensive collecting policy of criminal justice resources that keeps the Sealy Library the outstanding research library in our mission fields.

Many of the books he mentioned are available here at the Lloyd Sealy Library, and all are available through CUNY libraries. They are listed here with their call numbers and/or links to their pages in OneSearch.

Collected Essays by James Baldwin (in particular, "The Fire Next Time")

The Lloyd Sealy Library launched an updated look for the website on August 7, 2017. We have refreshed the color scheme, improved mobile responsiveness, increased accessibility, and simplified the main search box. Once the semester is underway, you'll also see an interactive "Chat with a librarian" box on the homepage during chat reference hours.

A "Preview" site was available for public testing and feedback for two weeks prior to the launch. The website's new look was also tested for usability with 19 John Jay students in Spring 2017.

Think something's missing? Have a comment or critique? Let us know what you think! We value your comments:

About the search box: The biggest change is the search box on the home page. We have simplified this search box to make finding library materials even faster and easier using OneSearch, based on the data we collected in a usability study. All search options, including CUNY+, are still available. (More about OneSearch.)

Another important update: OneSearch also has a new look in time for Fall 2017, courtesy of CUNY's Office of Library Services. John Jay implemented the new user interface on August 21, 2017.